McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [106]
Rafe looked both amused and puzzled, but he let the statement go by without remarking on it. “I reckon you’d best hurry,” he told her. “Heddy’s got quite a spread laid out down there in the kitchen.”
Lorelei nodded gratefully, regretting that she’d mentioned Holt at all, and made for the room she shared with Tillie, Pearl and Melina.
This would be her last night of comfort, she thought, as she laid the bundle of cloth down on the foot of her bed, and probably her last night of safety as well. And for all of that, she couldn’t wait for morning.
Hastily, she smoothed her hair and washed her hands and face at the basin. Then, after drawing a deep breath on the landing, she descended into the kitchen by the back stairs.
Heddy’s table was indeed laden with all sorts of good things—a roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, three kinds of vegetables and two kinds of pie.
John and the Captain had already filled their plates, and they sat on the back step, eating and tossing the occasional morsel to the dog. Rafe and Holt stood when Lorelei came into view, Rafe easily, Holt as an apparent afterthought, and with a nettling air of reluctance.
“Sit yourself down,” Heddy ordered good-naturedly, from the rocking chair near the stove. “Have to dig right in around here. My food don’t last for long.” She held Pearl on her lap, feeding him small bites of creamy potatoes, while Tillie sat at one end of the table, eating hastily, but with good appetite. Melina, seated to Holt’s right, smiled as Lorelei took the empty chair to his left.
Holt and Rafe sat down again, and took up their forks.
“I told you there wouldn’t be any word of Frank,” Heddy told Holt, taking up the threads of a conversation that had begun before Lorelei entered the room. “If that handsome devil was within fifty miles of Laredo, I’d know it. He’d have been at my back door wantin’ a piece of peach pie.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lorelei saw Holt smile, but barely, and bleakly. “If he shows up here,” he told Heddy, “tell him I’ll be back at John’s place, outside San Antonio, in the next two weeks.”
“You think he’s dead?” Heddy asked.
Holt stiffened, and Lorelei wondered who Frank was, and what he meant to the man beside her. Not that she would have considered asking.
“No,” Holt said, breaking a hot biscuit in half and slathering both sides with butter. “I do not.”
“I wonder,” Heddy mused, sounding worried. “If he’s alive, he’d know you’re in Texas. And if he knew that, you’d have heard from him by now. He’d want to help get Gabe out of jail.”
From across the table, Melina caught Lorelei’s eye.
Inwardly, Lorelei flinched. She tried not to think about her friend’s man, and the fact that her own father had sentenced him to death.
“Most likely,” Holt said evenly, “he’s just lying low. Judge Fellows and that Bannings shyster railroaded Gabe. Maybe Frank figures they’d do the same to him.”
The remark stung, as it was surely meant to do, and Lorelei flushed. Did Holt hold her responsible for her father’s actions? Her hand trembled as she lifted her fork to her mouth. She was upset, but her appetite hadn’t dwindled, and she was darned if she would let Mr. McKettrick drive her away from that table.
“Frank’s probably in Reynosa,” Melina put in.
Holt stopped eating. “What makes you say that?”
“He’s got family there,” Melina replied, and took a long drink from her glass of milk. “If he thinks the law is after him, that’s where he’d go.”
Lorelei had to look at Holt then, pride be damned. She was too curious about his reaction to this announcement to do anything else.
Holt was staring at Melina as though his life might depend on his ability to describe her every feature in exquisite detail. “Reynosa—that’s where we’re off to,” he said slowly. “To buy cattle, I mean.”
“Could be he knows we’re headed that way, and he’s waiting,” Rafe